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Seymour Hersh: Saudis Paid Pakistan To Hold Bin Laden

Yet another revelation from award winning U.S. investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh. You might remember some months ago Hersh exposed the fact that U.S. military commanders frustrated with the Obama administration’s lack of action on ISIS, started sharing intel with Bashar Al Assad’s government. Read More He could not get a mainstream U.S. news outlet to run with the piece.

Now Hersh claims that the Saudi government paid Pakistan to keep Bin Laden so that he could not be interrogated by the U.S. Here is an extract from his interview with Ken Klippenstein of AlterNet. Read Full Story

KK: So you don’t know if the hush money was from the Saudi government or private individuals?

SH: The money was from the government … what the Saudis were doing, so I’ve been told, by reasonable people (I haven’t written this) is that they were also passing along tankers of oil for the Pakistanis to resell. That’s really a lot of money.

KK: For the Bin Laden compound?

SH: Yeah, in exchange for being quiet.

KK: Do you have any idea how much Saudi Arabia gave Pakistan in hush money?

SH: I have been given numbers, but I haven’t done the work on it so I’m just relaying. I know it was certainly many—you know, we’re talking about four or five years—hundreds of millions [of dollars]. But I don’t have enough to tell you.

KK: Why didn’t they apprehend Bin Laden? Can you imagine the intelligence wecould have gotten from him?

SH: The Pakistani high command said go kill him, but for chrissake don’t leave a body, don’t arrest him, just tell them a week later that you killed him in Hindu Kush. That was the plan.